The Great Revealer

This morning I awoke to see a bead of sunlight dribbling in through the gap in the curtains of our bedroom. The light streamed across the bed, over my quilt-covered toes and up the wall. This is my first Spring in this home and each day I am shown a new light. Olive meowed that it was time for breakfast and she followed me into the laundry room, where an irregular trapezoid of sunshine coming from our garage window covered a section of the rug. We laid down together and cuddled in the warm blanket of light. After feeding the cat I poured my Oat Straw infusion and sat in the den. Across the street, our elderly neighbor was taking out her trash. This takes her about 5 minutes to inch down her walkway all the way to her trashcan. In the foreground, our front yard was still frosty, not yet touched by the warmth of day. I silently cheered on Anette, hoping she would make it to the trashcan before the garbage truck pulled down the street.

Living in such a high latitude means the sun dramatically changes position throughout the year. The shifts are substantial. Every day brings its unique illuminations.

This morning I thought about how there’s so much conversation around how we change as individuals. Obsession over the one variable we can control—ourselves. What about the sun, The Great Revealer, and how we change in a new light?

1000 days

In the Summer of 2021 I felt the urge to share more. I was turned off the by passiveness of Instagram. Before social media platforms, seeking out art would take effort. Whether the viewer had to travel to the museum or even simply to an artist’s website, there was some sort of exchange of effort. I don’t believe that a platform like Instagram, which requires almost nothing of the viewer, creates any sort of relationship. If an Artist puts all of themselves into their work, why shouldn’t the viewer also be required to give a piece of themselves to the art as well?

So I took to my own stage, a website that I had floated behind the scenes for a couple of years. In 2021, I got a roll of film back from a hike in the mountains with my friends Kailyn and Amanda. As I was organizing and archiving the negatives, I realized how many photographs I had taken over the last dozen years that I never deemed good enough to share publicly. But they were photos of my life, photos of the people I love, and stories that I wanted to tell.

I started a consistent practice of scheduling out daily posts— I had so much to share in the backlog, but I also realized how much new art I was making. rolls of film, video, collages, paintings, doodles, words and many other things that didn’t fit into any sort of category. Over the years friends had asked me what my creative practice was looking like and often I would say that I didn’t really have a consistent one. The daily journal practice showed me otherwise.

I made a deal with myself. I wouldn’t publicly share my journal page for 1 year. I was going to see this through before inviting others to the page. I would mention it to friends in passing, while others found their way here on their own, but I knew once it was shared with the world my relationship to it would change. I needed a space that was just for me, a space to stop imagining how people would receive my work. A place to let it out into the world.

Most people in my life don’t know this exists, some check in whenever I post about it, and to those who are here every few days (shoutout to my mom and Kira), thank you. Any time someone goes out of their way to navigate to my website, I am filled with gratitude. This art isn’t packaged in a small square and delivered to your timeline. This art wasn’t easy for me to make. Maybe it’s only fair that it’s not easy to find either.

Thank you for trusting me to show you the world through my eyes. Here’s to 1000 more.

inner dialogues

Context always matters.

Language links moments together.

Silence needs no translation.

Have an idea + make it reality = Alchemy

Collaborating in art is a great way to trick yourself out of self deprecation.

Not everyone should be like me.

“The ego will always choose the journey over the destination”

I need to stop getting up from the table before I finish chewing.

Thanks for helping me unpack my bags and hanging up the laundry, the wind will carry me now.

Beginner at many practices, or a master of exploration?

One title would be easier, but much less human. It’s all so subtle.

Clinging to the language, the closest thing we have, while the mystery slips on by behind the words.

6202020

Four months into living with my parents after the world shut down in 2020, it was time to go. I remember walking around the neighborhood with my mom, one of the only things that gave me structure in my life during that time, and her telling me that I had to go get my life back. I was struggling and I knew that I was sinking deeper the longer I stayed. Life was unknown, which is how it had always been, but I had mostly been able to put that thought away. Now, the pandemic put that worry at the forefront of every single conversation. As I write this, I’m struck by the selflessness of Motherhood. How a mom keeps showing up with what they think is best for their child, even if it’s hard and painful for them. Parenting seems like the ultimate religious experience. A faith that at the end of the day, their kid’s life will lean towards kindness, that your kid will make the right decision, bring the right people into their life, that they’ll call, and hold you in their heart as they grow into the world. Time after time I have been shown this love. So when my mom told me that it was time to go, she was right. Off into the unknown, unfolding world (much like the world before 2020) to find my place in it. A few days after I arrived in Anchorage, I drove out to one of my favorite spots. I walked over the train tracks, down a dirt path, and sat where the mud reached the land. I took this photo at 11:38PM. As the tide lapped in, I felt like I had my life back. No lightbulb, no dramatic spotlight of sunshine on me, just a gentle feeling that I was where I needed to be. Maybe my mom had told those mountains to hold me when she couldn’t. And all that has come to me since has been a gift.

what color was the memory?

I just found an old roll of film that I had shot back in 2018. For those who haven’t shot slide film, it’s quite finicky and needs to be carefully metered to achieve good exposure. Each time I load a roll of slide film I convince myself that this time I’ll nail it, but I never really do.

I wonder how memory and color play with one another, especially when using film photography as a tool of reflection. Slide film generally has cooler colors, and I think that changes my relationship to the memory. If I shoot a warmer film, like Kodak Gold or Portra, it seems to paint the past in a different color. Or Fuji, with a greener hue. It’s hard to objectively judge this idea because maybe the memory outweighs the photograph and the color is secondary. I remember reading that the etymology of photography comes from “painting with light.” Maybe the film is the brush, and the strokes do, in some subtle way, change reality’s past.

The memory of Summer

The memory of Summer in the city will always live with me. It’s easier now, in a mid-January cold-spell, to romanticize the heavy heat radiating off the pavement. In fact, on one of those dog days of August you may have caught me writing a love letter to Winter. Maybe I wish for the freedom of Summer, the weather aside, a period of time where the schedule has fallen away and infinite possibility has taken its place. This day, the day I captured these photographs, the Pope was in town. People had come from far away, taken off work, cut class, and joined in the streets. Everyone was a kid that day. Playing in the water fountains at city hall, dancing in the streets, waiting. Waiting to see one man who rode around in a funny little cart. Maybe he would shake your hand or bless your baby, maybe you just wanted to say you saw him. Whatever the reason, it was just one of those timeless days, where we remembered to be there.